Sustainable Harvest

How the plant lives

The first question for any wild food is: what does harvesting it do to the organism? The answer depends on which part you take ¹.

• Fruit, nuts, and seeds are made to be taken. A raspberry cane or an oak doesn’t notice what you pick, though wildlife does.
• Mushrooms are the fruit of a fungus living in the soil or wood. Picking them is like picking apples; the fungus lives on. Cutting or pinching above the soil and carrying them in a mesh bag is the usual advice ².
• Leaves and shoots of vigorous perennials grow back. Nettles respond to picking by sending up more young tops, which stretches the season ³.
• Roots, bulbs, and whole plants kill the plant. For abundant weeds that doesn’t matter; for slow native perennials it matters a lot.

Slow plants: ramps

Ramps are the textbook case. A ramp can take up to seven years to grow from seed to maturity, and patches spread slowly by dividing bulbs. One study estimated that harvesting whole plants from a quarter of a patch could take 22 years to recover from. Ramps are listed as of special concern in several eastern states, and Quebec banned commercial harvest after many patches disappeared ⁴.

Better practice: cut one leaf per plant and leave the bulb. If you want bulbs, take a few from a large patch, leave the root plate in the ground, and take about 10 percent or less, not every year in the same place ⁴. The leaves carry most of the flavor anyway.

The same logic applies to wild ginger, trilliums, wildflowers, and anything that is slow and uncommon: leave it, or take very little.

Fast plants: weeds and invasives

At the other end are plants you can’t hurt: garlic mustard, dandelion, lamb’s quarters, purslane, wild parsnip roots, and many others. Garlic mustard is an invasive plant that crowds out woodland wildflowers, and pulling it helps the woods; on DNR land, invasive herbaceous plants may be removed freely ⁵. Foraging that leans on these species takes pressure off the native plants.

Rules of thumb

• Take a fraction. Leave most of any patch, and spread your picking across it.
• Leave the best. The biggest, most vigorous plants are the breeders.
• Leave food for wildlife. Bears, birds, deer, and squirrels depend on fall nuts, acorns, and berries.
• Know local abundance. A plant abundant in the Driftless may be scarce up north, and the reverse.
• Don’t trample. A patch of spring ephemerals can be crushed by careless feet.
• Harvest cleanly. Use scissors or a knife on leaves and stems, and fill holes when you dig.
• Come back. A patch you return to every year teaches you what it can bear.

Where not to pick

Some places are contaminated rather than fragile:

• Roadsides and railroad rights-of-way, which are often sprayed and catch runoff.
• Old orchards, farmyards, and building sites, which may have lead and arsenic in the soil from old pesticides and paint.
• Lawns and parks treated with herbicides.
• Water downstream of farms, feedlots, or septic systems for watercress and other aquatic plants, which can carry pathogens; cook them if in doubt.

What to take from this

Match the harvest to how the plant lives. Fruit, nuts, and mushrooms can be picked freely without killing anything; leaves of vigorous perennials grow back; roots and bulbs kill the plant. Take one leaf per ramp and leave the bulb, and lean on abundant weeds and invasives. Leave the best plants and plenty for wildlife, and avoid sprayed roadsides, old orchard soils, and contaminated water.